Portugal - Day 2, Porto

In the morning there was another very sharp frost but the good news was that this meant another blue sky and an impressive sunrise over the River Ave. The hotel room was warm but the public areas were chilly, inadequate electric heaters were working to full capacity and the staff in the breakfast room were wrapped in woollies and fleeces and looked thoroughly cold and miserable. The man at reception lamented that it might be all right for us but for him it was painful to be so cold. I think he must have thought that we had come from the North Pole or something.

Outside was even colder and the roads were icy and treacherous but we weren’t driving today so this didn’t really matter except that there was a steep hill down to the river that was a bit difficult to negotiate. We crossed the river and trusting Kim’s instinct turned right to where she assured me would be the metro station. I was not convinced and after a while overruled her and made us turn in a different direction. Kim’s navigational skills are quite weak but on this occasion she was absolutely correct and when we stopped to ask for directions we were sent back the way that we had come and for once I was forced to acknowledge her superior sense of direction and at the second attempt we found the station and much to my embarrassment it was exactly where she said that it would be.

Although she was good at navigation this morning she wasn’t much help once we arrived at the station and we had to seek the assistance of a local lad in purchasing a ticket from the automatic machine and used all of the available six minutes before the tram arrived in going through the instructions, buying a ticket and then getting it validated and only just completed the procedure before it pulled into the station. It took about forty-five minutes to travel to Porto on the Bombardier Flexity Outlook low-floor dual-carriage ‘Eurotram’ and it stopped every few minutes to pick up and drop off more passengers. It was an impressive metro that was only started in 2002 and continues to be expanded and enlarged today and it stopped twenty-four times before we reached our stop at Trindade in central Porto.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Porto because it is one of the most industrialised districts in Portugal, and Maia, one of Porto's satellite cities, has the largest industrial park in the country. I thought it might be a bit grim but although I didn’t know it I was about to experience the wow factor! Based entirely on Kim’s earlier navigational fluke I allowed her to choose the direction to walk and she headed downhill and south where she confidently predicted that we would find the river. First we walked through the Praça da Liberade with a statue of King Pedo IV and impressive neoclassical buildings flanking it on either side and then we reached a busy junction and Kim took us south again on a road that took us to the City Cathedral, which is the oldest and most important building in the City.

From the terrace outside the Cathedral there were good views of the city and we were at once struck by the huge contrasts. Alongside modern hotels and banks there were houses that looked desperately poor with rotting windows, balconies that looked perilously unsafe and through the windows 1950s kitchens and old fashioned furniture and it was clear to see why (according to Eurostat) Portugal is the nineteenth poorest country in the European Union (out of twenty-seven) and easily the poorest in Western Europe.

The historical centre of Porto is now a declared UNESCO World Heritage Site and we were now approaching one of the six bridges across the River Douro, the Ponte Dom Luis I, which is an iron bridge designed by a student of Gustav Eiffel and built on two levels. From the top elevation there were unbeatable views of the river, the old town and Vila Nova de Gaia, a sister city on the other side of the river. The Douro is the eighth longest river in Western Europe (the eighteenth in all of Europe) and flows through Spain and Portugal and meets the Atlantic Ocean here at Porto. It was simply fabulous walking across the bridge, the sun was shining, the river was a glorious shade of deep indigo blue and the tiles on the coloured houses on either side reflected the sun and made everywhere look cheerful and happy. On the balconies of the houses people were opening the shutters and allowing the sun to fill their homes with welcome warmth following a cold night.

On the other side we walked through narrow streets of derelict houses where some families were hanging onto occupation that must surely end soon and down to the riverbank that had good views back across the other side of Porto. We were now in the city of Vila Nova de Gaia, which is where the city’s famous port lodges all have their cellars and sit side by side next to the river. On the water were flotillas of Rabelos, which are traditional sailing boats that used to transport the wine in barrels from the vineyards up river, but that was before the river was dammed in the 1950s and 1960s to prevent flooding in the city and to create hydro-electricity. Now the wine is brought to the City by road in tankers but that is not nearly so romantic or picturesque and these little boats are left here bobbing up and down in the water simply for the benefit of the tourists.

All of the port lodges have a museum and guided tour and we choose the first that we came to, which happened to be the Cálem port lodge that had a visit to the museum, a guided tour, port tasting, and all for only €3 each, which was exceptional good value for money. Under European Union guidelines, only the product from Portugal may be labelled as Port and it is produced from grapes grown and processed in the Douro region. The wine produced is fortified with the addition of a Brandy in order to stop the fermentation, leaving residual sugar in the wine, and to boost the alcohol content. The wine is then aged in barrels and stored in caves, or cellars, before being bottled. The wine received its name Port in the latter half of the seventeenth century from the city of Porto where the product was brought to market or for export to other countries in Europe from the Leixões docks. The Douro valley where Port wine is produced was defined and established as a protected region, or appellation in 1756, making it the third oldest defined and protected wine region in the world after Tokaji in Hungary and Chianti in Italy.

This was all very interesting stuff but what we really wanted was to get to the tasting and we weren’t disappointed when at the end of the tour we were given two generous glasses of port in the hope that we might buy some more from the shop. We didn’t because we wouldn’t have been able to get it through airport security but we did consider going around for a second time.

Instead we crossed back over the bridge to the Ribiera district which used to be the commercial centre of Porto but is now an up market tourist centre with gaily coloured houses, quayside restaurants and the highest prices in the City. Actually they weren’t really so bad and we choose to sit at a table at the edge of the pavement and were surprised at how few people were taking this dining option in the warm midday sun. Soon more people joined us and it gradually got warmer and warmer and I had to take off layers of clothing just to stay comfortable and we enjoyed a nice tuna salad and a bottle of wine for a very reasonable price.

After lunch we walked along the quayside and wondered what was going on over the river on the other side where there appeared to be some sort of noisy festival and then we walked back into the city through shaded streets and made for the Torre Dos Clérigios, which is a church with the highest tower in Portugal at seventy-six metres high and two hundred and twenty-five steps. It had been a long time since we had climbed our last tower in Trogir in Croatia so we bought some tickets, went to the top and admired the expansive views over the City.

After that we decided that it was getting late so we made our way back to the metro station stopping briefly on the way for a drink at a pavement table before going back to Trindade to catch the tram. During the day something had been puzzling me because all of the clocks seemed to be an hour behind and even here at the station the displays said four when our watches said five. I thought that this was strange so asked an official who confirmed that it was indeed four and smiled when I showed him my watch and suggested that it was five. It turns out that Portugal uses the same time as the United Kingdom and that we had been an hour ahead of ourselves for the last two days, this explained why it was still light at half past six last night, why they were surprised when we turned up for dinner an hour early, this was why the breakfast room was empty earlier today and also why it was so cold when we left the hotel this morning. This was a most disorientating experience and one thing is certain, I will never make a Time Lord!

Eventually the train arrived and we got on board and found a seat. At one point along the route the train followed the route of a small road and on the trackside, behind a stone wall there were two women and one had just finished having a country wee and was pulling her pants up and showing off her ample backside to all of the passengers on the tram. I can imagine her friend was reassuring her that she would watch out for cars and was keeping an alert look out over the wall and down the road but both were completely oblivious to the tram full of people passing only a few metres away behind them and getting a full view of her exposed wobbly cheeks.

Our horological error gave us an unexpected extra hour and we were glad of that because it had been a busy two days and when we got back to the hotel this gave us time for a rest before going down to dinner in the hotel dining room. This is unusual for us as we usually prefer to dine in the streets but the hotel was some way out of town, it was cold and anyway it had a good menu and for a four star hotel the prices were very reasonable. We had a second excellent meal, my grilled hake was especially good, and we reflected on two excellent days before going to bed.

Portugal - Day 1, Frost, Beaches & a Sunset

When we left Stansted Airport on a six-thirty Ryanair flight to Porto there was a hard frost on the ground and the temperature was minus 3º centigrade and when we arrived less than two hours later in Porto there was a hard frost on the ground and the temperature was also minus 3º centigrade. It is unusual to get frosts on the west coast of Portugal and this had clearly taken people by surprise and at the airport there were shivering staff on duty to make sure we avoided the untreated icy patches on the short walk to passport control. Once through we were met by a lady from the car hire company who explained how cold it had been and why this necessitated the wearing of several layers of clothes, a scarf, a hat and a pair of woolly gloves. I have to concede that it was a bit chilly but I have to say that she seemed to me to be exaggerating the effect. Later we were told that on the day before that it had actually snowed and this was the first time that anyone here could remember such a weather event.

After picking up the car we put our watches forward one hour, as you do when you visit mainland Europe, and we set off for our hotel at the nearby town of Vila do Conde. Unusually for me this turned out to be very straight-forward and we drove straight to the town and followed the location instructions that turned out to be completely accurate. Consequently there was no reason for me to get agitated or to blame anyone else for getting hopelessly lost and within an hour of landing we were booked in to the Hotel Santana and settling into our room which was on the second floor and had a magnificent view over the river Ave and the Convent of Santa Clara on the opposite side of the water.

We only had two days in Portugal so we didn’t stay long in the room and we went back to the car and drove the short distance into the town. We were surprised to see the extensive remains of an old aqueduct so we parked the car and went sight seeing. The Aqueduto do Convento was a sixteenth century structure that was built to supply water to the Convent which was once the largest in all of Portugal but is now being converted into a Pousada hotel, which is the Portuguese equivalent of the Spanish Paradors. It was cold in the shaded narrow streets but the good thing about this frosty weather was that there was a clear blue sky full of a big sun and out of the shade it was really very pleasant indeed.

After leaving the town we drove to the sea front and were delighted to find an empty golden beach and a big Atlantic Ocean with huge waves crashing in over the rocks that fringed the edge of the water like steadfast guards on eternal sentry duty. It must have been a very cold night because the damp sand was still frozen and it broke with the snap of a dime bar as we walked across it right down to the rocks and the salty spray. I am not really a big fan of beaches and tire of them quickly but in the winter when they are deserted like this I can explore them for hours. The only other people were a jogger or two and some fishermen at regular intervals along the rocks.

Actually it was beginning to warm up and according to a street sign at a chemist shop the temperature was approaching double figures so as it was about midday we looked for somewhere to stop for a drink and choose a bar with outside tables and selected one in the sunshine at the edge of the pavement. This seemed to surprise the young girl at work behind the bar and she apologised as she chipped the ice of the table and wiped it down as she explained that she hadn’t really expected anyone to sit outside this early.

After the sun had warmed us through we left Vila do Conde and drove north to the neighbouring city of Póvoa de Varzim which was once the busiest sea port and had the largest fish market in northern Portugal and still has a busy port today where we could see fishing boats going in and out of the harbour. We didn’t stop at Póvoa but carried on along the coast road adjacent to the wide beaches and arrived in the village of Apúlia where we thought we might look for somewhere for lunch. It was a small fishing village with all of the gaily coloured boats parked at a safe distance from the rough sea that was pounding in fiercely again over the rocks. There were a couple of restaurants but they weren’t exactly what we were looking for so we walked along the beach to some windmills that were probably holiday lets but were all shuttered and abandoned today.

It was a busy little village and especially interesting were the houses with colourful tiled walls in bright blues, greens and yellows. There was one of those old fashioned hardware stores that you rarely see in Europe anymore and a couple of old fashioned mini markets that are always a joy to shop in. Portugal is one of the poorest countries in Europe, and behind the tiled walls we could see that the houses were made of tin and through open doors and windows we could plainly see that the homes were simple and sparse. Although it is in Western Europe (in fact it is the most western mainland European country) Portugal did not begin to catch up with its neighbours until 1968 after the death of the dictator António Salazar and eventual entry into the European Community in 1986.

We left Apúlia but after a while the coast road disappeared into the sea so we were obliged to turn inland and pick up the main EN13 road to Esposende a few kilometres to the north. This part of Portugal is predominantly rural and agricultural and all along the sides of the roads there were vegetable stalls with local people selling their produce to passing motorists. And it looked good too and this must have been the season for potatoes, cabbage and onions because there were ample supplies of all of these. We crossed the River Cávado just south of the pine-fringed town and drove along the front looking for somewhere to eat.

We found just what we were looking for and came across a café bar on the seafront with tables on a terrace in a sheltered spot and in the full glare of what was by now a very warm sun. And then we discovered something else about Portugal that we liked very much indeed; compared with Spain it is very, very cheap indeed. With low expectations we ordered food from the menu at about €5 a plate and were surprised to be served with a quite splendid excellent value for money lunch, which together with a couple of beers and some glasses of wine came to less than €20, including the tip. It was really very warm now and although the locals were still wrapped up I was down to my shirt sleeves as we sat and lapped up the January sun. After lunch we continued north to an edge of town beach, which was much like the others and had a nice little beach bar where we sat in the sun and a bottle of beer and a pot of tea cost a very reasonable €2. This place is on my radar to return to very soon I can tell you.

By now it was late afternoon and our thoughts turned to alcohol supplies for the hotel room and on the return journey we stopped again at Apúlia and bought some wine and beer to take back with us. As Portugal produces 50% of the World’s wine bottle corks it was difficult finding a screw cap bottle so we had to make do with a very cheap bottle of local red wine with a plastic stopper and we worried about what exactly it would taste like?

The sun was dipping now and we wondered if we might be fortunate enough to see a sunset and so back at Vila do Conde we pulled into the car park and made again for the beach that we had visited earlier this morning. And we were not disappointed because as the sun went down over the Atlantic horizon it filled the sky with a vivid red sprawl that was the equal of anything we had seen in Greece a few months earlier. It seemed late for a January sunset at nearly half past six but we didn’t question the fact and we gleefully took pictures and enjoyed the moment before finally returning to the Hotel Santana for the evening.

We booked a table for eight-thirty and then went to the room to try the wine, which was a little unusual but quite drinkable, a bit like a slightly fizzy Lambrusco and after a couple of glasses we went to the dining room and although we had booked they seemed a little surprised to see us. After an excellent meal in a restaurant overlooking the river and the illuminated Convent we were tired at the end of a day that had started very early and so we had an early night and hoped that the weather would hold out for at least another day.

Riga 2008 - The Hotel Latvia

One very good reason for returning once more to Riga was the opportunity to visit our favourite cocktail bar at the Hotel Latvija because when it comes to a favourite cocktail bar this is one that stands out above all the rest. Quite literally stands out because it is on the twenty-sixth floor (out of a total of twenty-seven) of the hotel, which is the tallest building in Riga.

The Hotel Latvia is a modern high quality tourist hotel but has a very secretive past. It was built by the communist regime and was one of the few State approved tourist hotels run by the Russian travel Agency, Intourist. Intourist was founded in 1929 by the dictator Joseph Stalin and was staffed almost exclusively by the KGB secret police. It was responsible for managing the great majority of travellers access to, and travel within, the Soviet Union and it grew into one of the largest tourism organisations in the world, with a network embracing banks, hotels, and bureaux de change. It is said that all of the rooms in the Hotel Latvija were full of surveillance equipment to keep an eye on what guests were up to and in the nearby Latvian Museum of Occupation, which sets out a grim story of twentieth century Latvian occupation and oppression, there is an exhibit of the telephone bugging equipment that was discovered in the building when it was renovated and brought up to four star status in 2001.

On this visit to Riga and the hotel, in addition to enjoying the cocktail bar and based upon a recommendation we decided to eat there as well. The food was excellent and there was a reasonably priced self-service buffet but what was especially good about his meal was that it happened to coincide with ‘International Woman’s Day’ and there were free cocktails for all of us and flowers for the girls. To be honest I had never heard of International Woman’s day before, it certainly isn’t that big in the United Kingdom, and to be honest I have to say that I thought it was a bit odd to have it on a Saturday, which is a day really reserved for sport, but it turns out that this was just an unhappy coincidence because IWD is held every year on March 8th and is a day of day of global celebration for the economic, political and social achievements of women around the world.

It all started in New York when in 1908 fifteen thousand women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights. In 1917, with two million soldiers dead in the war, Russian women chose the last Sunday in February to strike for ‘bread and peace’. This turned out to be hugely significant and a contribution to the overthrow of the Romanovs and four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. That historic Sunday fell on 23rd February on the Julian calendar, then in use in Russia, but on 8th March on the Gregorian calendar that was in use elsewhere. It has since become very important in Eastern Europe after a 1965 decree of the USSR Presidium that International Women's Day was declared as a non working day in the USSR "in commemoration of outstanding merits of the Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, their heroism and selflessness at the front and in rear, and also marking the big contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples and struggle for the peace." Good for them, but I still think it would be more appropriate to have IWD on a Monday!

Another interesting thing is that although Latvia doesn’t care to remember or celebrate much about the Russian occupation they seem happy enough to continue with this day off from work arrangement.

In these days of equality it is important to be fair of course and I am pleased to say that International Men's Day is an international holiday, celebrated on the first Saturday of November. It was first suggested by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1999 and was supported fully by the United Nations.

The Skyline Bar is a great place to relax in the early evening after a day sight seeing and a good spot for watching the sunset. For the in crowd in Riga this is clearly the place to be and to be seen, and the modern, trendy furniture and décor suggests that there’s a level of exclusivity to this place that is in contrast to its total accessibility. It’s easy to just wander in off of the street and take the external panoramic lift to the top of the hotel and enter the best bar in the city.

Getting one of the seats by the windows is absolutely essential but can be difficult when the place is busy and competition is fierce, and you really need to have your wits about you and move in quickly when the chance presents itself to get one that looks to the west to enjoy the stunning view of the City, the river, the Russian Orthodox Cathedral that stands nearby and the Baltic Sea out on the horizon. Sometimes you have to wait and stay alert for window seat opportunities but it is worth the effort, especially if there is a sunset to be seen. There was no sunset on the first day this time but on the second day our patience was rewarded and we were treated to a glorious show as the sun dipped down and bathed the city in a warm orange glow like the dying embers of a very good fire.

The skyline is supposedly designed to resemble a Manhattan bar but as I have never been to New York I am unable to confirm whether it has achieved this objective. The place has a relaxed atmosphere and a friendly ambience and it certainly doesn’t have Manhattan prices with generous cocktails costing on average only about £4.00.

There are many suggestions for the origin of the word cocktail, almost as many as the choice of drinks available at the Skyline Bar. Some say that it was customary to put a feather, presumably from a cock's tail, in a drink to serve both as decoration and to signal to teetotalers that the drink contained alcohol but my favourite is that after a cock fight it was customary to mix a drink with a different shot of alcohol for each remaining feather in the winning cock’s tail.

This has to be one of my favourite places to sit and relax, have a cold beer or an exciting cocktail, take in the views of the city and enjoy the company of good friends at the end of the day.

Riga 2008 - Jūrmala

On the second day of this year’s vist we returned to Jūrmala which is the largest beach resort in the Baltic States and is famous for its natural treasures, the mild climate, sea, healthy air, curative mud and mineral water.

The first time that we saw Jūrmala beach was in June 2006 and it was a real surprise for this was a very high quality beach with thirty-three kilometres of scrupulously clean white sand, a blue flag beach and a clear Baltic Sea stretching out over the Gulf of Riga towards Sweden somewhere over the horizon. I had expected the sea to be grey and forbidding like the North Sea of my childhood holidays but instead it was a serene denim blue and looked genuinely inviting. There were a few holidaymakers on the beach but not many in the sea because I suspect that looks were probably deceptive and that the Baltic remains fairly inhospitable for most of the year and despite the warm sunshine I wasn’t prepared to find out because to be honest I am more used to swimming in the Mediterranean and would almost certainly have to toughen up a bit if I was going to test the genital shrivelling temperatures of the Baltic.

Jūrmala has been a popular retreat as far back as the eighteenth Century when it became a favoured recuperation point for Russian soldiers recovering from service during the Napoleonic Wars. For over two hundred years after that Jūrmala has been Riga’s playground, especially in the elegant days of the 1930s right through to the years of Russian occupation. During this time the city was the ultimate destination for holidaymakers from the east and countless tourists from across Russia descended on this small peninsula all the way from from Lielupe to Vaivari every Summer. Under the Communist regime this was a popular destination for high-level Party officials and it was a particular favourite destination of Russian Presidents Brezhnev and Khrushchev. Today, as Latvia rejects most things Russian, most of the Soviet flavour has faded and the hotels, shops and restaurants have been upgraded to Western standards.

Most visitors to Jūrmala are from Latvia and they form 32% from the total number of tourists. Lithuanians and Estonians are next, each with 13% from the total number of visitors and the number of Russian tourists is increasing at 10% of the total, Finland with 7% and Germany with 5% come next. Visitors from the United Kingdom make up only 1% from the total number of tourists which is lucky for them really because that means no football shirts, chavs or misbehaving louts on stag weekends who happily seem content to stay in Riga.

We returned to the beach in January 2007 on a gloriously sunny morning, with snow on the ground and walked there through some wooden romantic houses built in a variety of styles and most in various states of disrepair and renovation. Since the first half of the nineteenth century, the popularity of classical architecture made Jūrmala what it is and there are buildings in the styles of historism, Art Noveau, national romantism, and functionalism. But whatever the style the characteristic feature of Jūrmala’s architecture is that it is rich in decorations of wooden carvings on the facades and roofs of the buildings. The houses were fascinating, mostly made of timber and in contrasting styles that suggested that the owners had had fun building them in a competitive contest each determined to eclipse the efforts of their neighbours. These were once grand seaside villas accommodating the wealthy Russians who came here for their summer holidays and we were relieved to see that thankfully many were being restored, rather than being demolished to make way for modern structures. It is an interesting fact that the town has an official list of four hundred and fourteen historical buildings under protection, as well as three thousand five hundred wooden structures.

The first time we had seen Jurmala beach was in the June sunshine when it was a wide expanse of inviting sand and gentle seashore so this time we were amazed to find it covered in ice and snow. I had been told stories of a freezing sea but I don’t think I was completely convinced so to see this was awesome. The sea had frozen at high tide and formed into natural ice sculptures well over a metre deep and topped with an inch or two of undisturbed snow. We clambered over the ice to the sea line and found the sand was frozen solid too, I imagine the sea was cold but of course no one was brave enough (or insane enough) to try it. I had never seen a beach frozen solid before and certainly had never walked on water before either.

This time there was no snow or frozen sea and the beach was strangely warm and hospitable and a digital information sign advised us that the temperature was 10º centigrade. Walking along the pine fringed beach we passed the fine old swimming baths building that was built in 1916 and where it was previously possible to take a bath in the heated seawater. In Soviet times, it served as the resort spa centre and was a medical institution with the best facilities in Jūrmala. Today however it was closed for business and looked neglected and quite sad. Nearby was a sculpture of a turtle that represents long life that had been impossible to photograph on the summer visit but much easier today on account of the absence of people.

Micky decided that this was a good opportunity to test the waterproof qualities of his £250 Dubarry boots and he swaggered out to sea in a confident manner and was able to confirm that his calf length, waterproof, breathable boot crafted from choice crushed water resistant leathers and lined with gore-tex was an excellent purchase that kept his feet both warm and dry. I decided not to test my £20 boots from Springfield’s outlet shopping centre because I had the awful feeling that these wouldn’t be quite so waterproof.

After the beach we walked for a second time along Jomas iela, which is one of the central and oldest streets of Jūrmala with restaurants, summer terraces, hotels and cafés and here we found a bar that was grateful for customers and we enjoyed a bowl of spicy Russian Solanka soup and a glass of Latvian beer.

Just as we had arrived, we left Majori by train and headed east back to Riga and on the journey passed by the Lielupe River, which is a beautiful waterway that flows all the way from Lithuania to the south to drain in the Gulf of Riga and runs parallel with Jūrmala beach, sandwiching the resort between river and sea and creating a marvellous natural panorama that was magnificent even through the grubby windows of the train.

easyJet - transaction charges

On the issue of credit card transaction charges, thumbs up on the other hand to Ryanair low cost airline rivals easyJet. Today I booked summer holiday flights to Athens and when I arrived at the payment screen the charge for paying by credit card was a flat rate of £1.70 plus 2.5% of the cost of the tickets. This is so much more equitable than the Ryanair scam and almost completely in line with the advice from the banks in respect of transaction charges. The total transaction charge was £9.00 on a £280 fare compared with the massive £50 that I had paid two days previously with Ryanair on a £275.00 fare.

I would probably book with easyJet more often in preference to Ryanair but to be honest the only thing that really matters at the end of the transaction is the total price to be paid and in most cases even with the deceit charge Ryanair is generally cheaper.

So what am I complaining about then? Well, it’s a matter of principle, Ryanair are being dishonest and I question therefore their business ethics and their respect for the customers.

The reason that easyJet are generally more expensive is that while the two airlines share a common business idea, easyJet's strategy differs from Ryanair's in a number of areas. easyJet flies mainly to primary airports in the cities that it serves, while Ryanair often chooses secondary airports to reduce costs. For example, easyJet flies to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and Paris Orly, the primary airports in Paris, while Ryanair flies to the smaller Paris Beauvais Tillé Airport, which is a seventy-five minute bus journey from the French capital city.

Out of the way airports do not really matter to me and are not necessarily a deciding factor in selecting a location because generally I find in more cost effective to hire a car and stay in a cheaper hotel in a nearby town rather than stay in expensive city centres. This worked well recently in Carmona near Seville and in Vila do Conde near Porto both of which had the benefits of a quieter location, better hotels than I could really afford in the city and with excellent transport links for visiting the major attraction.

Ryanair - up to the same tricks again...

Michael O’Leary it seems is up to his thieving tricks again. I have just become accustomed to the £4 per passenger per flight credit card transaction charge when he goes and puts it up again. Today I booked return flights for five people to fly to Portugal and was stung at the end by a £5 per passenger per flight credit card transaction charge. That is a 25% increase on the same day that the official rate of inflation was reported as just slightly above 3%.

That is an almighty £50.00 surcharge on these flights. Information about this charge on the website says:

“to defray the substantial administration costs we incur when processing credit and debit cards a handling fee applies to each passenger, per flight segment…Even allowing for these small charges our fares still represent the best value for money”

Small charges, my arse! According to the banks the normal credit card handling fee is on average about 2% so that means about. £5.60p on my £280 fare and I got whacked nearly ten times that amount. There is a special offer on at the moment of zero charges for Electron cards, but who on earth has Electron cards? And they only have to process the payment once so how can they justify multiple charging of passengers? Why aren’t Trading Standards looking into this? Ryanair has over forty million passengers a year so I calculate this rip-off to be netting them four hundred million pounds a year in pure profit. To put this into perspective consider that in 1963 the Great Train Robbers stole £2.6 million and in 1983 the Brinks Mat robbery pulled off £26 million.

Last year, Stephen McNamara, a spokesman for Ryanair said: “All of those processes go to Visa separate times (for each passenger) so we have to make sure that we are covered in order to cover the costs.” It turns out of course that this statement was another pack of Ryanair lies that was quickly straigtened out by the banks, which just confirms their complete contempt for their customers.

Let’s be honest we all know that Ryanair have got to pay for the cost of flying somehow and zero charge flights are just a bit of a gimmick and I for one would just be happy if they admitted this and just charged me the £5.00 in the first place! That way I wouldn’t feel ripped off and deceived. I don’t mind the baggage charges and the excess weight charges because I can avoid them or it’s my own fault if I don’t but I do object to unreasonable charges being imposed that it is simply impossible to avoid.

Riga 2008 - Not one of the great train journeys of the World

We have been to Jūrmala both by mini-bus and by taxi before but this time we decided to travel by train. Thankfully this only involved a journey of about thirty minutes or so because take it from me; this was not the Orient Express and certainly not one of the great railway journeys of the world.

Latvia's national railway company is Latvijas Dzelzceļš but the development of the Latvian railways since independence in 1991 has not been a great priority for the Government and due to lack of investment the system has suffered badly as a result. Many trains are poorly maintained and delays are common, but luckily for us the routes to the satellite towns and villages around Riga on an electrified line generally have a better service than the intercity and international routes. Riga's central station is Centrala Stacija and although it has been modernised in a fashion it still appears stark and authoritarian with an alarming absence of modern customer care basics. I shouldn’t complain however because to put things into some sort of perspective the return journey to Majori was only one Lat, twenty-five cents, or about £1.40 in real money.

We found the platform and the waiting train in its bright blue and yellow livery and got on and found a seat and one thing that can be said about Latvian railways is that they are punctual because this one left dead on time.

This train was not the best one that I have ever been on; it was utilitarian, grey, uncomfortable and a living testimony to finest Russian engineering and style. The interior of the carriage was a no-frills affair with hard bench seats and a complete absence of modern travelling refinements. It was grubby and without charm and it creaked and groaned as the tired old engine pulled the carriages out of the station and out of the city over the river Daugava and into the outskirts of the city that were a total contrast to the cosmopolitan city centre. Here it was easy to understand why people from Latvia give up a life in their own country to come and live in Lincolnshire. Progress between worn out stations was painfully slow and the train passed through suburbs strewn with litter and rubbish and with a marked absence of civic pride. About half way to Jūrmala there was a huge estate of decaying communist high-rise apartment buildings that had probably been constructed hastily in the 1960s to house the seven hundred thousand Russian workers who were sent here by the Soviets to colonise Latvia in a deliberate policy of Russification. Life must have been quite good for these privileged colonists under the old regime but when Latvia gained independence in 1991 they were in for a shock because it only granted automatic citizenship to those who had lived in the first independent Latvian state, between 1918 and 1940.

There was good reason for this because Latvia had suffered hugely under Soviet rule. During the Stalin years thousands were arrested and sent to Siberian labour camps, or simply executed for being part of the Latvian partisan groups who opposed occupation. To replace them, hundreds of thousands of Russians, Belarussians and Ukrainians flooded into the republic and the Latvian language was squeezed out of official use. Latvians were resentful citizens of the USSR and by 1991 they comprised only half of the population of their own country, while in Riga itself only a third were Latvian.

Today, the government is determined to revive the Latvian identity and it says that it’s policy towards Russians who immigrated here during the Soviet period is aimed not at punishing them for the sins of the Soviet regime (as some suspect) but at ensuring that they learn Latvian and integrate fully into the new society. In order to naturalise, Russians must take a test in Latvian, and pass an exam about Latvian history, in which they must ‘correctly’ answer that the country was occupied and colonised, not liberated, by the Soviet Union in 1945.

The train lumbered on and a lady ticket collector examined our tickets. This appeared to be a throw back to the Soviet days because each carriage seemed to have it’s own ticket inspector, which seemed to be a very generous staffing allocation. There were not many tourists on the train and the announcements were made in impenetrable Latvian and the stations had a confusing absence of any helpful place names but luckily there was an old lady sharing our bench seat who guessed that we travelling to the town of Majori and gave us helpful advice on where to get off.

Getting off of the train was another interesting experience because there was no platform in any sort of fashion that we would recognise and it was necessary to leave the train down steep steps that stopped about fifty centimetres from the tarmac that involved a final jump that only the most able bodied would ever be able to manage. There were no signs of measures to combat disability discrimination here I can tell you. In fact, on account of the lack of engineering refinements on board, the whole railway journey experience seemed fraught with danger and this was well illustrated by a sign on the heavy metal doors that seemed to indicate that male passengers in particular should be careful not to trap their man bits in between the closing doors as this could be very, very painful indeed. And to emphasise this the letters can be rearranged into that well-known warning ‘tite bals nastie’.

Riga 2008 - The Orthodox Cathedral

Next on the itinerary was the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, which has been recently restored in an ugly duckling style transformation from a dirty grimy grey (which was the shade of paint that the communists used to paint everything) to a resplendent sandstone yellow under black domes with gleaming crosses. The renovated building is clean and sharp with painted red brick stripes and elaborate white columns soaring into the sky above.

Although most of Riga old town is restoring its vibrant colours to the buildings there are still examples of the communist absence of finesse or style. Just across the road from the cathedral for example is a splendid old building that still retains its dreary grey exterior and is awaiting its own overdue transformation. The Soviet Union must have had the biggest grey paint factory in the world and it was used indiscriminately everywhere to create a depressing uniformity. I imagine that the paint shop colour chart at the equivilent of Homebase probably had options like, overcoat grey, battleship grey, storm grey, grease grey and so on.

The Nativity of Christ Cathedral in Riga is a magnificent and impressive building that sits between the old town and the new and was built in a Neo-Byzantine style between 1876 and 1883 at a time when Latvia was part of the Russian Empire. It is the largest Orthodox cathedral in the Baltic provinces and was built with the approval and a blessing of the Russian Tsar Alexander II on the initiative of local governor-general Pyotr Bagration and bishop Veniamin Karelin.

Russian Orthodox Church buildings differ dramatically in design from most western type churches. Their interiors are enriched with many sacramental objects including holy icons, which are hung on the walls and in addition, murals often cover most of the interior walls with images that represent the Theotokos (the Mother of God), saints, and scenes from their lives. The cathedral in Riga is especially renowned for its icons some of which were painted by the famous Russian war artist Vasili Vereshchagin. During the First World War German troops occupied Riga and turned its largest cathedral into a Lutheran church but after the war the Nativity of Christ Cathedral once again became an Orthodox cathedral in 1921.

There was more unhappiness for the building under the communist regime because the Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion and to achieve that objective the communists confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in the schools. The main target of the anti-religious campaign was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of worshippers in Russia and its subjugated territories. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labour camps, theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited.

After the Second-World-War things relaxed a little for a while and the number of open churches increased and by 1957 about twenty-two thousand Russian Orthodox churches had become active again but in 1959 Nikita Khrushchev initiated a new campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church and forced the closure of about twelve thousand, including the Nativity of Christ Cathedral in Riga. Members of the church hierarchy were jailed or just simply removed and their places were taken by state conforming clergy many of whom had links with the KGB. The Cathedral in Riga was converted into a planetarium and it became neglected and was allowed to lose its magnificent façade. Now that it has been restored the place is surely more heavenly than ever having been returned to its intended purpose.

We have visited the Cathedral before of course but because it is so fascinating we just had to do so again. In a side chapel there was some activity and because on a previous visit here there had been a corpse laid out in a casket we suspected that this might be a funeral service but I wasn’t tall enough to see over the shoulders of the congregation and I though it rude to intrude to close to the front because of a macabre interest. The service was attended by nuns in black robes and pointy hats who looked like extras from a Lord of the Rings movie and was led by a priest in a lavish scarlet and gold robe.

The interior of the cathedral is bright and cheerful, adorned with shining icons and smelling of sweet incense and today there was a lot of frantic activity because inside there were cameras and a film crew and I can only imagine that the were preparing for a broadcast on Latvia Songs of Praise or whatever its equivalent is. There were a lot of people inside all bowing, crossing their chests, kissing the holy icons and doing their best to look solemn. I suppose we must have looked a bit conspicuous. Kim felt obliged to leave after she was rebuked for taking photographs. I was a little more discreet and didn’t get caught but a little later on I was chastised by a priest with a wild wiry beard for having my hands in my pockets. Little did he know that I was looking for loose change to put in the offertory box but now that I had been told that hands in pockets was disallowed I decided not to bother.

We left the cathedral and retired as usual to the Skyline bar and from our window seats we watched the people flocking into the church and wondered just how it was managing to accommodate them all. At the front door were some clergy in yellow cassocks who were obviously waiting for someone important to arrive and just before, what we guessed was, the scheduled five o’clock start a black limousine pulled up outside and the occupant was greeted with exaggerated reverence and hurried inside, presumably to get on with the service. I wished that we had stayed a while longer to see exactly what was happening but I will never know if we would have been welcome to stay for the proceedings.

Riga 2008 - Art Nouveau and Dancing on Ice

We returned to Riga in 2008 and on the first morning we walked around the Art Nouveau district where previously grand buildings that had fallen into disrepair during the communist period of occupation are once more being restored to former glory.

Art Nouveau was an international architectural style that flourished for a brief period in Europe between 1880 and 1914. It was an elaborate statement of bourgeois wealth and influence and a rejection of aristocratic stoic classicism that had previously dominated. And as you can see from the picture they also seemed to have a rather healthy obsession with breasts.

This period happily coincided with a time of growth and prosperity in Riga, which by 1900 had become the third largest city in the Russian Empire after Moscow and St. Petersburg and it has over eight hundred fine examples of Art Nouveau buildings across the city. These are the legacy of Latvian Romanticism, which was the classical era of Latvian culture that made Riga one of the European centres of Art Nouveau

When I first saw them I was completely astounded by the beauty and the grandeur of these very fine buildings. Their ornate facades and intricate decoration were perfectly framed against the blue sky and they looked spectacular. Between the two world wars tourists flocked to Riga, which was a vibrant and grand city, before first the Germans and then the Russians did their worst, it was known as the ‘Pearl of the Baltic’ and visitors referred to it as ‘the Paris of the North’ and walking around this area now it is very easy to see why and everywhere there is evidence of a prosperous past that is now beginning to re-emerge.

You can always tell where the best buildings are in a capital city because the Government buildings, foreign embassies and the financial institutions move in and this is where they all are standing side by side in rows of tall pastel coloured buildings with impressive statues and friezes all competing with each other for superior magnificence. This is only my opinion of course but if you ignore the special significance of the Gaudi factor I think these buildings are better even than those in Barcelona. Other European cities famous for Art Nouveau were Paris, symbolised by the design entrances for the city's new subway system, Brussels, which was enjoying a new prosperity from the wealth it had gained during the Industrial Revolution and colonial expansion in Africa, Vienna, Munich and Glasgow, which although Art Nouveau was not generally embraced in England, the style developed in exciting new directions in this Scottish city.

The Art Nouveau region in Riga is an area in the north of the city not far from the old town and quite close to the Albert Hotel. We walked first down Dzirnavu where there are some of the finest buildings and then down the main boulevard of Elizabetes where the government buildings are located and then further out towards the river where the buildings are patiently waiting their turn for renovation and the quality of the buildings starts to decline. Some day it is certain that all of these buildings will be restored to their former glory but for now they remain sad and unstable with health and safety precautions taken to protect pedestrians from falling masonry and rusting ironwork.

The pace of renovation is truly impressive and on every return visit the number of restored buildings has increased. And this is not the only thing that is changing because I have detected changes that make me glad that I visited Riga for the first time nearly three years ago. The number of tourists visiting Riga has increased by nearly 25% since 2005 and for someone visiting then the changes are obvious. For a start things are becoming more expensive and prices in the restaurants and the bars are beginning to creep up as the Latvian hosts wise up to how much we pay for things back home in the UK. On this visit I would say that prices were getting closer to those in Prague and I certainly needed to exchange more sterling for Lats than ever before. Interestingly though, taxi prices seemed to be going down, prices to and from the airport were cheaper, and I’ve never come across that before. The drivers are just as crazy though and the one that took us from the airport to the city when we arrived was a complete psychopath who drove at alarmingly breakneck speeds in the most unpredictable manner that made us pleased to arrive at our destination in one piece.

Apparently the weather is changing too and I blame global warming for that. The average February, early March temperature is supposed to be a few degrees below zero but we barely saw temperatures fall below five or six degrees centigrade and on the stroll down Jurmala beach for example the weather was most unseasonably warm. All of these unexpectedly high winter temperatures had played recent havoc with winter sporting activities and these had had to be moved from natural to artificial venues in recent weeks before our visit. One artificial venue that we did enjoy was a skating rink in one of the public parks in the city centre. We were determined to give it a try and it looked easy enough with two young men skating effortlessly across the surface and performing pirouettes and other dazzling moves so we hired the boots and took to the ice.

It might have looked easy but it certainly wasn’t. The boots were excruciatingly uncomfortable as they our gripped ankles like instruments of medieval torture and the iron hard ice surface looked as though it could inflict really serious damage to fragile bones if there was to be a fall and bodily contact with the inhospitable surface. The boot hire was for a full hour but fifteen minutes of iron caliper treatment was enough and even though we were beginning to master the technique this was more than enough and an application for ‘dancing on ice’ will almost certainly have to wait until after quite a bit more practice.

Ryanair - a small complaint about rip-offs

I am becoming more and more convinced that Ryanair must have a whole department that does nothing else but dream up ways of introducing new rip-off charges for its customers.

I have always made it clear that I am a big fan of Michael O’Leary and Ryanair and except for the underhand charge for using a credit card I don’t really mind all of the stealth charges that are constantly being dreamt up and changed to catch out unsuspecting travellers because these are all fees that can be easily avoided by being a little bit canny.

Last month there was a lot of talk about Ryanair being the most expensive for in flight catering and that didn’t bother me unduly either because I make a point of making sure that I don’t need to buy anything on board the aircraft because I consider £6.20 for gin and tonic a touch too expensive (even for a so called double measure). Why would a sensible person in their right mind pay these prices when they have only paid £1 for the flight? A cup of tea is even worse and this costs £2.50! That’s a ¼ of a litre of lukewarm water and a cheap tea bag. You can probably get about two hundred tea bags for £2.50 at a Supermarket, more if you buy Tesco value!

Although I am a fan, one thing I don’t approve of however is downright deceit and blatantly taking advantage. This weekend I flew to Porto in Portugal and on the return flight as usual the cabin crew handed out the menu cards and the Ryanair magazine that includes some pages with items for sale on board. The prices are always quoted both in Sterling and in Euros and this takes into account the exchange rate. Later the flight attendant then pointed out that the prices quoted were out of date and today if anyone wanted to pay in Sterling this would be exactly the same price as in Euros. The prices are clearly set out in the magazine and Trading Standards have rules about this sort of thing. When a mistake like this happens they are not obliged to sell the goods at the lower price but they should withdraw the goods from sale until the issue is rectified. If they try to charge more for goods that are advertised at a lower price, then a misleading price indication is given, which is a criminal offence. The reason given was because of the current exchange rate which today meant that one pound now equals on Euro. Well Ryanair must be working on a different set of data than the rest of Europe because I was fairly sure that after a drop the previous week the pound had improved recently and that this represented greedy exploitation of the recession situation.

When I returned home I checked the financial pages on the BBC and I was absolutely correct and the pound was trading against the Euro at about £1.11 and by my reckoning that means the Ryanair dirty tricks department had added 10% profit to their prices at a stroke. I suppose they might argue that this excess charge could be avoided by paying in Euros but personally I would recommend avoiding the on board snacks menu altogether and take a sandwich on board instead.

10 things I didn't know about Spain a year ago

Spain consists of a number of autonomous communities established in accordance to the second article of the Spanish Constitution which recognises the rights of regions and nationalities to self-government whilst also acknowledging the ‘indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation’. Currently, Spain comprises seventeen autonomous communities and two autonomous cities, both of which are on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. As a highly decentralised state Spain has possibly the most modern political and territorial arrangements in Western European. Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia are designated historic nationalities and Andalusia, although not a nationality, also has preferential status, the remaining are regionalal Provinces without nationality.

Santiago de Compostela is the capital of autonomous region of Galicia and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. After Jerusalem and Rome it is the third most holy city in Chrisendom and the cathedral is the destination today, as it has been thoughout history, of the important 9th century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James. Santiago is such an important pilgrimage destination because it is considered the burial site of the apostle, James the Great and legend holds that St. James's remains were carried by boat from Jerusalem to northern Spain where they were buried on the site of what is now the city.

Sherry is a fortified wine made from white grapes that are grown near the town of Jerez on the coast of Andalusia. In Spanish, it is called Vino de Jerez and according to Spanish law, sherry must come from the small triangular area of the province of Cádiz between Jerez, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and El Puerto de Santa María. After fermentation is complete, sherry is fortified with brandy and because the fortification takes place after fermentation, most sherries are initially dry, with any sweetness being added later. In contrast, port wine is fortified halfway through its fermentation, which stops the process so that not all of the sugar is turned into alcohol.

The name Costa Blanca was allegedly conceived as a promotional name by British European Airways when it first launched its air service between London and Valencia in 1957 at the start of the package holiday boom. At that time the cost of the fare was £38.80p which may not sound a lot now but to put that into some sort of perspective in 1960 my dad took a job at a salary of £815 a year so that fare would have been about two and a half weeks wages! The average UK weekly wage today is £450 so on that basis a flight to Spain at British European Airline prices would now be £1,100. Thank goodness then for Ryanair because I flew to Seville for just £30 return which represents just about three hours work today in comparison with what of been about a hundred hours in 1960.

I have identified a strict hierarchy of Spanish property ownership. First of all there are the owners and these are top of the pile, and then below them are the guests, these are the people who are occupying the apartments as friends of the owners and right at the bottom (actually some way down at the bottom) are the renters, who are common people who can’t afford overseas property investments themselves and don’t have friends who can either.

In a bullfight six bulls are killed in an afternoon or evening fight and this involves three matadors with their band of attendants, the picador horsemen who lance the bulls and the banderillos who stab them with barbed spikes. If the spectators approve of the matador’s performance they wave white handkerchiefs to signal to the fight’s president that he should reward him with a trophy, one or both of the bull’s ears and/or its tail. It is called a fight but it is far from fair and the statistics show that in two hundred and fifty years only three matadors have died at the Seville bullring but they have dispatched almost two hundred and fifty bulls a year, so I can’t imagine that a lot of money changes hands betting on the outcome of the competition.



According to legend, the tapas tradition began when the King of Castille, Alfonso the Wise, visited a tavern in the town of Ventorillo del Chato in the province of Cádiz, and ordered a glass of sherry. There was a gusty wind, so the innkeeper served him his glass of sherry covered by a slice of ham to prevent the sherry from getting dirty. The King liked it, and when he asked for a second glass, he requested another tapa or ‘cover’ just like the first. This evolved into the practice of using slices of bread or meat as a practical measure meant to prevent fruit flies from hovering over the drink. The meat used to cover the sherry was normally ham or chorizo, which are both very salty and activate thirst and because of this, bartenders and restaurant owners began creating a variety of snacks to serve with sherry, thus increasing their alcohol sales.

Cantabria is the richest region in the world in archaeological sites from the Upper Paleolithic period (that’s the stone age to you and me). The most significant cave painting site is the cave of Altamira, dating from about 16,000 to 9000 BC and declared, with another nine Cantabrian caves, World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Around thirteen thousand years ago a rockfall sealed the cave's entrance preserving its contents until its eventual discovery which was caused by a nearby tree falling and disturbing the fallen rocks. The really good bit about the story is that it wasn’t discovered by Howard Carter, Tony Robinson or Indiana Jones but by a nine year old girl who came across them while playing in the hills above the town in 1879.

Spain has more blue flag beaches than any other participating country with four hundred and ninety-nine along almost five thousand kilometres of coastline, the United Kingdom by comparison, has only one hundred and forty-four in nearly twelve thousand five hundred kilometres. Greece has the second most blue flags at four hundred and thirty and the most in the Mediterranean Sea and France is third with two hundred and thirty-eight.

Galicia is a popular holiday choice with Spanish people living in the south and central cities of the country because they like to holiday in the north to escape the oppressive heat and enjoy Galicia's famous seafood. In August alone, eight million Spaniards travel north from cities like Madrid and Barcelona to the more temperate climate of Galicia with its green scenery and spectacular beaches. The Galician climate is changeable and the region is often referred to in Spain as the wet or rainy region. Despite this, it is those in the south and central cities of Spain that go to Galicia in July and August to enjoy the hot, but not oppressive, summer weather. The local geography is also dramatically different from that of the central and southern regions with meadows, hills and mountains and is known affectionately in Iberia as green Spain.

The return of the Mole

The Mole is back in the garden and has been very busy indeed, he is more efficient than a JCB tracked excavator and I can hardly believe the size of the hills and the amount of soil he can shift in one night. Not only that but he goes to the trouble of separating the stones from the soil so what I am left with is a pile of the most perfectly graded John Innes no.1 compost. At the weekend I demolished his huge pile of excavated soil and put it onto the vegetable patch so in retaliation last night he built me an even bigger one. I don’t know if I should just leave this one alone or provoke him some more by taking it away.

If you have an enemy then it is important to know what you are up against. Moles are animals that live underground and burrow tunnels and holes. Male moles are called boars and females are called sows and a group of moles is called a labour. They create extensive systems of tunnels and they can move their own weight of soil every minute and these tunnels can stretch for a distance of thousand metres or more. There excavate a system of permanent tunnels about thirty to sixty centimetres below the surface that cannot be detected from above but it is the runways close to the surface that do the trouble in gardens. Underneath my back lawn is a system of tunnels bigger than the London underground!

I am not sure how to get rid of him because some of the traps available look positively medieval and I don’t fancy using them at all. Human urine is said to repel moles but I have tried that and it hasn’t worked either. Failing that the weasel is the mole’s natural enemy. Apparently if the soil from a molehill is removed carefully an entrance to the tunnel will be revealed. If there is a weasel in the garden it may well nip down and clear out the mole, either by killing it or driving it away. Presumably the next problem is getting rid of the weasel! Mammals such as foxes and cats don't actually like the taste of weasels and leave them well alone so I suppose once you have one of them you have just got to put up with it.

As well as being a nuisance and making unwelcome alterations to the garden infrastructure, moles can be dangerous. I know this because the other night I tripped over the fresh molehill in the garden that was over twenty centimetres high and considerably more than that across and I mention this because a mole excavation has previously been responsible for a much more high profile accident than this. King William III, the Prince of Orange, had an unfortunate incident involving a molehill with irreversible and mortal consequences. In February 1702, whilst riding his horse in Richmond Park in London, the horse stumbled and fell over a molehill, causing the King to fall and break his collarbone. A subsequent fever and illness followed and in the following month he died, much to the joy of the Scots who had spent many years under his steely persecution. This is the reason why even today the Scottish Jacobites raise a toast to ‘The Gentleman in Black Velvet’ and why the statue of King William in St. James Square in London depicts a molehill at its base.

On the whole moles are regarded as cute and likeable creatures whose mistake is being in the wrong place at the wrong time but whose unfortunate visiting card is an almighty mess behind them as a result of their nocturnal activities. Unlike some pests however, such as rats, birds and insects, which spread disease and cause damage to property, moles generally do not appear to cause any real harm other than leave behind an unsightly ‘spoil hill’ as a dramatic calling card to show where they have been.

Moles feed on small invertebrate animals like worms living underground but supplement them with insects and their larvae and have to eat about half their weight in food every day. Every adult mole requires approximately twenty worms a day to live and since they cannot put on body fat, they have to eat throughout the entire year and do not hibernate. As a result, they are most active in the autumn and early spring when dining conditions suit them best of all.

Moles are very territorial anti-social animals that mate for one day, once a year, and then spend the rest of the year alone. As they live on average for about four years this means only about four shags in an entire lifetime. What sort of an existence is that I have to ask? After annual sex, moles have litters of up to seven pups and as they mature into adults, each mole sets about establishing its own tunnel network and will dig at speeds of up to four metres per hour. That’s a lot of tunnels and a lot of damage. I am becoming fearful of the house and garden disappearing into a pit of subsidence on account of the activity of the mole! I am not exagerating when I say that my mole can shift even more earth that the Thunderbirds mole rescue machine so you can imagine just how much damage it is doing!

Spain 2008 - Highlights

At the beginning of the year if anyone had suggested that in 2008 I would visit Spain five times I would have considered them mad because I have always said that Spain doesn’t especially appeal to me. I had formed this ignorant opinion on the basis of a few visits to the Spanish Costas and holiday islands which I have to accept now is not at all representative of the second largest country in Europe.

In May we were playing golf on the Costa Blanca and being so close decided to visit Benidorm. Actually I have to confess to having been there before because I went for a fortnight in 1977 at the Don Juan Hotel, somewhere along the Avenida Del Mediterráneo at the back of the Levante beach.

I have to say that Benidorm was nothing like what I was anticipating. It was really rather pleasant and the beaches were immense and spectacular with beautiful clean sand and blue flags flapping proudly in the breeze. If Benidorm was a surprise then the old town was an especially nice place with a blue domed church, reminiscent of those in the Greek islands, and a pedestrianised area that was positively delightful. I remembered this from my visit thirty years ago but not much else I have to say and it was a pleasant surprise and I left with the confirmation that despite the tourists that flock in every summer that this is a very real Spanish town, with Spanish culture and a Spanish history of tuna fishermen and merchant sailors that was actually quite plain to see. I wished that I had grasped that in 1977 because if I had then I am sure that I would have enjoyed it more then.

During this holiday it dawned on me that there must be more to Spain than beaches and condominiums and I decided that it would be nice to try and find the real Spain. A day or two after returning home I found some cheap flights to Galicia and thought that it would be nice to start the search in the north of the country.

Galicia is a popular holiday choice with Spanish people living in the south of the country because they like to holiday in the north to escape the oppressive heat and enjoy Galicia's famous seafood. In August alone, eight million Spaniards travel north to the more temperate climate of Galicia with its green scenery and spectacular beaches. The Galician climate though is changeable and the region is often referred to in Spain as the wet or rainy region. The local geography is also dramatically different from that of the central and southern regions with meadows, hills and mountains and is known affectionately in Iberia as green Spain.

One day we visited the unspoilt fishing village of Corrubedu that has at its heart a port and a backdrop of traditional houses and pavement restaurants that probably hadn’t changed very much in years. Perhaps this was what Benidorm was like before the barbarian hordes from the north invaded fifty years or so ago and spoilt it. In the port there were a collection of small colourful fishing boats, some had been left to rest but on others men were still working gutting and filleting fish accompanied by flocks of interested seagulls.

We chose a seafront restaurant and selected Galician style squid, tortilla, salad and cerveza and enjoyed a traditional meal in the company of the noisiest Spaniards in all of Spain. This place was excellent and we finished our meal and explored the back streets and the traditional houses with their elevated granite grain stores in the gardens, called borreos, with their distinctive Celtic crosses and elaborate carvings. It is an interesting fact that Galicia has a culture, which is both unique and distinct from the rest of Spain, and the core of this difference is centred upon Galicia’s identity as a Celtic, rather than a Latin or Hispanic sub nation. Galicia along with Andalusia, Catalonia and the Basque Country are acknowledged as independent historical nationalities under the Spanish Constitution and as a consequence enjoy special rights and privileges.


Santiago de Compostela is the capital of Galicia and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. After Jerusalem and Rome it is the third most holy city in Christendom and the cathedral is the destination today, as it has been throughout history, of the important 9th century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James. There was certainly no mistaking that this is a very holy city indeed and the route to the Cathedral was lined with churches, monasteries and seminaries and finally we emerged into the central square, Praza de Obradoiro, where the Cathedral loomed high above in a most spectacular and impressive way. Inside, the Cathedral is nearly a hundred metres long and over twenty metres high and is the largest Romanesque church in Spain as well as being one of the biggest in Europe.



Close by the Cathedral we came across a bar that had a tempting tapas menu on the wall outside. This was what I had been looking for unsuccessfully on my last visit to Spain and we selected a table and began the difficult task of menu selection. We decided upon sardines, calamari, tortilla and salad and some Estrella Galicia beer. The food was reasonably priced and tasted divine and afterwards we left the little restaurant and continued to explore some more of the old city and after a couple of hours I felt confident enough to declare this one of the nicest places that I have ever visited.

In the summer a cheap flight opportunity to Andalusia in November provided another opportunity to continue the quest to discover real Spain. Galicia in the north had been a real eye-opener but this time it was a trip to the South and the part of the peninsula with which, thanks to the travel brochures I suppose, we are all more familiar, the Spain of flamenco, Moorish architecture, sherry, tapas bars and bull fighting.

Instead of staying in the city of Seville, where the hotels seemed to be a little expensive, we had chosen instead to book a cheaper alternative in the nearby town of Carmona that was about thirty kilometres away. We spent a day in the town but we weren’t sure that there would be enough to do to keep us amused all day so we walked very slowly at first towards the eastern gate of the old town, the Puerto de Córdoba which is built on an elevated ridge overlooking the central plain of Andalusia and opens to a glorious view of the surrounding countryside. The warmth of the sun was in contrast to the chilly shade of the street and we stayed a while and admired the view and warmed ourselves up before going back through the gate and climbing steadily towards an old castle at the top of the town that has been converted to a luxury Parador hotel.

We walked around the southern rim of the town and there were more good views over the plain and we sat for a while and soaked up more weak sunshine that was struggling to get up to full late morning temperature. Our route took us now to the Alcázar de la Puerto de Sevilla, which was the western gate protecting the entrance to the old town and then we walked for a little way into the new town and continued our walk to the Roman ruins about a kilometre away.

I have seen Roman ruins advertised before and sometimes they can be quite disappointing so I didn’t have high expectations of those in Carmona but they turned out to be a real surprise. It wasn’t the Colosseum or Pompeii of course but there were extensive excavations and a museum with an informative film about the Romans in Andalusia. It was principally an ancient Roman burial site or necropolis that was discovered in 1881 and there was also the site of what had been a rather large amphitheatre. The best part of all was that there was free admission and we spent well over an hour to look around the site.

It seemed that we had underestimated Carmona and there was a great deal more to do here than I had originally thought.

We walked back to the fortress gate and to a little bodega that we had picked out earlier for lunch. The Abacería L’Antiqua was full to overflowing and heaving with activity and just as we pondering whether or not to stay a table became available and we made ourselves comfortable. The food looked good and the bar was doing brisk trade so we selected some items from the tapas menu and waited for our food to arrive. It came quickly and it was delicious and we enjoyed it so much that we ordered second plates of our favourites and more drinks. The bodega was a vibrant and effervescent place with people of all age groups and whole families enjoying their Sunday lunchtime gathering and we liked the garrulous atmosphere and just being a part of it all.

Less than two weeks after returning from Andalusia in the south of the county we were returning to Spain but this time to Cantabria in the north. The lure of £10 return flights had tempted us to travel again even though it really was far too soon after our last journey but I find it almost impossible to let these bargain flight opportunities pass by.

Although the forecast was poor the weather by contrast was very good and there was a clear blue sky with just a few wispy clouds and from the hotel car park it was possible to see the sea only a few hundred metres away. We drove out of the village on a road that climbed quickly and at the top we were overawed by a sight that we were not prepared for. At a distance of about fifty kilometres we could see the high peaks of the Picos de Europa which were snow capped and glistening white in the mid morning sun. There had been recent heavy snowfall in the mountains behind the narrow coastal strip of the Cantabria coastline and this morning it looked absolutely spectacular. This I simply did not expect and I began to think about all the things about Spain that I don’t know about, which would fill several volumes of an encyclopaedia.

We headed towards the coast road and enjoyed the dramatic contrast of the Atlantic Ocean to our left and the lush green meadows of the hills to the right with the snow-capped mountains in the distance. We were heading for the town of Comillas but stopped several times to admire the power of the sea as great waves rolled in and battered the shore line. I had always thought of Spain as a Mediterranean country but closer inspection of the map shows that a third of the Country’s coastline is along the much more dramatic Atlantic Ocean.

In the summer Comillas is a busy seaside town but it is a lot quieter in December and there was plenty of room in the car park to park the car. We walked across the pristine blue flag beach washed scrupulously clean by the strong tides and then towards the little harbour with a handful of little fishing boats sheltering behind the strong granite walls. The tide was coming in quickly and as we watched the harbour began to fill with water and the little boats sprang into life as the sea lifted them off of the mud.

We left the town and in a very short time we were in the fishing town of San Vincente De La Barquera, which was busier than Comillas. There was an interesting castle and an old town that stretched from the headland to the church of Santa María de los Ángeles and which enjoyed magnificent views over a busy river estuary to the mountains beyond. This place was rather like Cornwall or South Wales with a lively Atlantic Ocean, a working fishing port and an intense blue sea fringed by verdant green fields. We were reluctant to leave but there were still thinks to see and we hadn’t visited the town of Santillana Del Mar yet, which is supposed to be one of the prettiest in Spain. When we arrived it turned out to be a real treasure. It was an unspoilt medieval town with a famous old church and cobbled piazzas and historic old buildings at every twist and turn in the streets.

Close by the town was the Altimira museum because Cantabria it turns out is the richest region in the world in archaeological sites from the Upper Paleolithic period (that’s the Stone Age to you and me). The most significant cave painting site is the cave of Altamira, dating from about 16,000 to 9000 BC and declared, with another nine Cantabrian caves, World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Well, you learn something new every day it seems!

My five visits to Spain this year now means that I have visited the country more than any other in Europe, nineteen times compared with sixteen to Greece, ten to France and nine to Italy. My next trip is in March when I will be visiting Madrid and the central region of Castile.